The Headliner
by Banen
Summary: "The running joke in this block is that we are just entertainers waiting to give the public and the media the greatest—and final—show of our lives." Mello awaits his execution on death row...unless he can prove he was framed for the most sensational crime of the century. But is two weeks enough time to convince a jury? Does he even want to be saved? Mello POV. M/M


Chapter 1: His Hair Was Fire

A/N: This is an AU story about Matt and Mello and is written from Mello's POV. Also, no, it's not a typo. His hair wasn't _on fire_, Mello mistakes Matt's hair for actual fire.

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><p>When I met Matt for the first time, it was the summer of my twelfth year. Of course, he wasn't Matt back then. It was around the the same that that Rossy, my collie shepherd mix, passed away in the cruelest way I've ever seen an animal go. I think that was hardest time for me, the time I met Matt and the months that followed. It was an unpleasant time for everyone. We had been doing some house repairs and I tied Rossy to the back fence so he wouldn't get in the way of my dad's tools and stuff. Well when I went to go untie him and take him for a walk, he was gone—rope and everything. He knew his way pretty well around the maple woods that grew behind the house so I thought he might have gone for a run. He should have been back by nightfall.<p>

I wish I had gone looking for him.

That night there was a lightning storm with thunder. If you've ever owned a dog, then you've probably seen their frantic crazed behavior towards loud noises. Fireworks, blow horns, thunder...they get all dogs into jitters. Well that night the thunder came with the lightning storm. I remember seeing the giant flashes of blinding hot light just tear through the sky, like they were searing the earth with blinding forks of white. And then there was a crackle in the distance. I was sitting in the living room watching from the window, and I heard the crack and saw the red flames quickly envelop a whole section of wood. It was brilliant and terrifying all at once and yet...transfixing with a tranquility I still can't describe. The fire spread quickly, eating everything in its path like a hungry sea sea of reds and oranges. Orange and Red washed over everything.

Lightning hit the tree house.

Tree house set on fire.

Everything was colors. Moving and running and spreading and leaping and lapping and licking and sputtering and crackling and crashing and bursting like when water hits a hot oiled pan.

The fire was alive. Except it wasn't fire. It was human.

With his long scrawny arms huddled close around Rossy's body, I watched a boy leap from the fire burial to the ground below. He swore over and over again as they rolled, crashing into branches and leaves and dirt and rocks...rolling and putting the fire out of his clothes, Rossy's hair...The boy was saying something but I couldn't hear it over the horrible high pitched scream that kept ringing in my ears. Crackles of orange and red and the screams. Everything was sounds and moving colors and screams.

The boy's arms waved and I inched out of my trance enough to realized the screams were mine. My legs moved despite my panicked mind; I ran to them. The boy threw his arms around me.

"Are you okay? Speak to me! Should I call an ambulance?" I sputtered out at him.

I remember thinking those first moments I saw him, _oh my God, his hair is fire! His hair is fire! How is it not burning his face?_

The boy looked up at me with the clearest green eyes I'd ever seen and whispered, "An angel came to my rescue."

He pressed his lips to mine and plum passed out across my legs. I tried shaking him but he wouldn't respond with more than a groan. Rossy licked my hand and the boy's head and I yelled at him to keep away from the fire. I would realize later that his hair was red but at the time I was just bewildered that the fire on his head wasn't burning with the same passion as the fire that ate the trees around us.

Somehow I dragged Rossy and the boy into my house.

An ambulance arrived in just under half an hour.

At the hospital, I asked the candy striper at the front desk if she could direct me to that kid. "Excuse me. I want to check on the boy who was burned and came in yesterday."

"Oh, you mean the child who rescued the dog? Yes, there are no visitor's right now, you may go up. Room 34 J on the second floor please."

I found the room easily. I knocked. A nurse was changing his bandages so I waited a minute before stepping through the white curtain that divided his part of the room from where another patient could have been. He smiled at me and I just sat there in the guest chair looking anywhere but at his face.

He spoke, finally, "Thank you."

I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded and turned my eyes to his bedside table. Water. An unopened jell-o snack. And umn...a pink...bedpan...

"You and your dog saved my life."

I looked up at him, meeting his eyes for the first time since he'd passed out the day before. I admit I was afraid. I didn't really know what to expect the kid to look like after rolling around in so much fire and I thought just...what if he was all disfigured and scary lookin' and I stared and hurt his feelings? I didn't think I could take it if it were me. I was scared to look at him and deep down I felt ashamed of my own fears. I tried to keep my eyes on his eyes but it was too hard not to see the whole boy. He had a some cuts across his cheek and the eyebrow on the left side was near singed completely off. His hair was so red I almost thought he was on fire again. The bandages were on mismatched parts of his body.

"Why are you shaking?"

"I'm not." I mumbled lowly.

Shaking? Was I? Embarrassed I stiffened as still as possible.

Again, it was the boy who broke the silence, "Guess I have the perfect mummy costume for Halloween, huh?"

I stiffened more, "M-my mother says Halloween is wicked."

"Ah," came the reply. "Wait...so you've never dressed up before? Or gone trick-or-treating?"

I shook my head.

"You're a strange kid," he went on. "But you saved me. I don't know what would have happened if wasn't for you and your dog. I haven't lived here for very long and I thought camping would be an excellent idea. Guess I should have checked the weather before pitching my tent. That storm caught me by surprise. I thought I was a goner in that storm. Your dog led me to that treehouse where there was shelter."

"That's actually a dangerous place in a lightnining storm."

"Tch. I know that now, you betcha. Gee." He padded down on the bandaged parts and winced, "So, what's your name, my little guardian angel?"

"Mello. Yours?"

"Matt." He smiled, "Do you want to see the burned area?"

I nodded. I wasn't scared so much anymore.

Matt undid the bandages. They weren't terrible burns but there would be some bad scarring across his stomach, back, and part of his chest. Bits of the leg too.

"Oh you don't have to take your pants off, it's okay." I covered my eyes to give him some privacy anyways.

His toned rose in pitch, "What are you so embarrassed about? It's just skin, like you have too. Ah, forget it. Girls are so weird about stuff like that."

Girls?

I stood up and puffed my chest out, "I'm a boy, you know."

At first the he just smiled blankly. Then the corners of his lips dipped slowly down as he furrowed his brow in realization.

That was his cue to be embarrassed.

"What? Oh man, gross!"

That wasn't the reaction I had expected from him.

"I'm gross?" I demanded, a little bewildered.

"Ugh, eww." He spit into the bedpan, "You should have told me that before I kissed you. Gee wiz."

I felt my ears burn as I remembered. I was so panicky at the time that it hadn't even registered what had happened, but now with a moment to reflect...well...

We didn't talk much after that but I ended up staying until the end of visiting hours anyways.

I couldn't explain it but it just seemed so natural the way we sat there, wordless for the most part. I buried my nose against my jacket and let the citrus-y aroma of an orange from my pocket overwhelm me. I was hyper conscious of his fingers as they trailed little circles across the bandages on his leg. It was safe. There was nothing here. No mom to yell at me, no Dale with his beer bottles and the sharp glass pieces he liked to shove up—

_BOOM!_

"Yaaaah!" I flinched, slipping off my chair painfully to the floor—right on my butt.

I looked up to see Matt with an exploded balloon across his lap.

I could feel the deep blush creep across my cheeks as his laughter filled the air, "Oh my God, you're hilarious."

I stuck my tongue out at him, "I'm glad you find me so amusing."

"You are amusing. You are fun. You are anything I want you to be." He opened his arms wide towards me like Jesus does in those paintings where he gathers all the little children to him.

I hesitated before allowing him to help me up, "So I cannot be any of those things without you, then?"

Instead of answering, he pulled me into a bear hug. We let our foreheads bump. He was so close it almost hurt to look at him.

I didn't know it then, that I would grow to crave that very touch. I didn't know that the boy in front of me would open my eyes to the world around me and teach me how to see into the depths of my own soul. I didn't know I would betray him and blacken my existence forever. Maybe I would have run right then and there, if only I _had_ known...

If only I had known...

...maybe he wouldn't have had to die.

Maybe...I wouldn't be stuck in this hell hole prison, waiting to join him.

Maybe.

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><p>Romero is the guard in charge of my block. He's a tall burly man of nearly six feet and I've grown fond of him these past thirty-seven years. He's a man who doesn't overexert his power on the inmates. He doesn't cause or look for trouble. He's like the walls that see and hear but don't whisper secrets. I was surprised to see him come to my cell. We've never exchanged many words. I stared as he unlocked the gate to my iron castle.<p>

"Mello."

"Romero."

I cocked my head to the right but didn't rise from my bunk.

"You have a visitor."

I raised my eyebrow at the guard, "One of my _fans_ come to see me off before I expire?"

Everyone here is somewhat of a celebrity. Our faces were once plastered across newspapers. Oh, I remember those days when they took me to trial. The lights and the cameras and all the protesters screaming for my head to be put on a platter. I stepped into the hall like a king. Nobody cared what the story was. Nobody cared if I was innocent, they just wanted a piece of me...the judge looked like a Grammy host all dressed up in black and ready to give me the award for most wanted criminal. I took my bow atop that stage many, many years ago. Locking us up here doesn't stop the groupies. They write letters. They come. Hell, there's a girl here trying to marry Charlie Manson. The running joke in this block is that we are just entertainers waiting to give the public and the media the greatest—and final—show of our lives.

"Fans? Something like that, they sent their greeting card ahead. Mean anything to you?"

I took the offered card in hand and turned it twixt my fingertips. It was a tarot card, the death. On the other side was a highly stylized letter. A single solitary letter L. I looked up at Romero, crumpling the card into a ball.

"It did mean something...in another life."

I stood up and followed him out into the hall. We found ourselves in front of a room I recognized for interrogation. Not the usual visitor, I presumed. I walked in, but Romero didn't follow. He closed the door and I could hear the click of the lock turn from the outside. The room wasn't much to look at—just a table and a couple of chairs...they were all chained to the floor so they couldn't be used as weapons. A woman sat to one side and a man stood beside her. They were both lacking composure but you could tell the woman was trying harder to hide it by sitting straighter and concentrating on looking demure.

"You're not the the court appointed lawyer," I said smoothly, not bothering to take a seat.

"No, Mr. Mello. I'm not a lawyer. I'm a journalist."

Ah, there it was. Someone else just wanting a piece of me.

"Sorry, I'm not giving you the right to my autobiography."

I turned away, intent on leaving. I knew the type, and I didn't want to deal with her.

"Wait, I'm sure you know that I'm with Wammy's. I know you recognize that card."

I stopped and tilted a bit, "You could have gotten that card anywhere. Giving it to me don't mean shit. Get the hell out of here."

She stood up, dropping her chair to the floor with a clang, "L sent me!"

At this I laughed. This kid was really pushing the grift.

"L sent you?" I mocked her, "Tell me, how does a dead man give orders?"

"I've been sent by L's successor," she acquiesced.

His successor. I could feel my blood boiling. His _successor _my ass! That two-timing albino weasel was nothing compared to L. I bet L was turning in his grave over the idea that his legacy fell to that little piss swine. Every time I close my eyes I see those white pajamas and that slim little neck...and what I wouldn't give to snap it in two! What the fuck would that dipshit send someone to see me for? I got up and kicked the door as hard as I could.

"We're done. Guard! Guard!"

"No, no, no, no, no, no! Wait, Mr. Mello, please. Please, I'm here to help you."

"I don't need help from Near," I spat and turned towards the door again, "Romero, let me out of here."

A gruff voice spoke, the man's, "Nobody's coming for you. We came from Wammy's, you know how this works."

Yeah. Yeah I knew how it worked, alright. Wammy's is well...there wasn't much point in arguing. The question was...were the two in the room my enemies or just innocent pawns sent by the enemy?

I took the empty seat and stuck my middle finger at the woman, "Okay. I'm listening. What did that motherfucking bleached-ass cunt-sucker send you here for?"

See? I can be civil. Nobody can accuse me of being uncivil.

The woman didn't answer. She simply stared at me. So I stared back. She was neither pretty nor ugly, the kind of girl you wouldn't notice in a crowd. The man was similarly unassuming.

And for all the hoopla, they said nothing.

Nothing at all.

"Is there something on my face that you keep staring?" I finally asked.

She blushed a little, "You are as beautiful as my grandmother described you to be."

"Your grandmother? The fuck, kid? Who the hell are you?"

"Yes, how rude of me, I forgot to introduce myself. My professional name is Lidner. The silent one is my partner, Track."

I didn't take her extended hand. Instead I set my shoes on the table. Lidner? Well fuck. Those amber eyes did look annoyingly familiar.

"My grandmother kept a diary that I inherited when she passed. It contained a lot of information about you, Mr. Mello. A lot of information, indeed."

"Now that's interesting. The granddaughter of Halle Lidner, you say? And you know all about me from her diary?"

"Yes, Mr. Mello."

"You say you know all about me. Then you should also know I'm the reason she's dead. I killed Halle Lidner."

"I don't believe you killed anyone."

"Go home, little girl. You don't know what you're digging into. Play historian with someone interested."

"You shouldn't be so hasty to shut people out, Mr. Mello. Do you suppose I might tempt your cooperation with this?"

Track handed a box to Lidner Jr. and she opened it. From the box she pulled out a pair of half-melted and cracked goggles.

A familiar pair of orange tinted goggles.

_Matt...oh Matt._

_I'm so sorry._

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><p><em>To be continued...<em>

A/N: Thanks for reading. Please review and subscribe :)


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